"After 5 years of conception, 5 years of experimentation and 10 years of continuous exploration, we finally succeeded in creating a new carbon material, adding another new member to the huge family of carbon materials!" On June 16, at a press conference held by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jian Zheng, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Chemistry), could not hide his inner joy to announce this good news.

On the same day, Nature published a paper on which he was the sole corresponding author. The paper reported that the work created a new type of carbon isomer single crystal, monolayer polymerized C60, with high crystallinity and good thermodynamic stability, through simple reaction conditions at atmospheric pressure, providing a completely new idea for carbon material research.

The new material is conceivably composed of soccer ball-shaped C60 molecules called "fullerenes" arranged one by one on a flat surface and connected to each other to form a solid "soccer ball" mesh structure.

It is worth noting that in this research, Jian Zheng received careful guidance and selfless help from his predecessors at the Institute of Chemistry, who have deep experience in the field of carbon materials. "I'm not alone in this battle, our lab is like a united 'carbon family' when we study the carbon material family." He said.

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